Imagine turning Labour and Wait — that temple to utilitarian good taste — into a wine bar, and you have something of the atmosphere of Canela. The Portuguese café, which opened 11 years ago a few doors down from the Donmar Warehouse in Earlham Street, has just been extended with an extra room that opens onto Shorts Gardens, completely redecorated and relaunched as a restaurant-cum-wine-bar.

With its restrained décor of petrol-blue tongue-and-groove panelling, polished white marble tables, dark leather banquettes, window stools and simple pendant lighting (the only frivolities being a glittering chandelier and a wall of vintage radios), you might expect restrained food to match.

But the menu, devised by owners Suzanna Pascoal and Suki Lam, is surprisingly ambitious, the dishes quite elaborate. Choose between the small “petisco” platters or larger dishes, which are perfect for sharing. We began with pataniscas — bacalhau fritters (£7), three small patties of salt-cod fried with onions and flour which were hot, salty and oily, and came with a herby mayonnaise which tasted of salad cream.

Squid Boat with chorizo, peppers and spiced tomatoes (£6) was a single plump pillow of squid, stuffed with a smokey-sweet ragu of chorizo, tomato and pepper and generously garnished with stems of fresh thyme, while the marinated seafood with tomato and capers (£11) consisted of chopped-up pieces of octopus, squid and whole prawns cooked in tomatoes, garlic, ginger, capers and spring onions, and was served warm. Both dishes were delicious.

The only real disappointment was the creamy black rice (£12), an unctuous, glistening black mound studded with three huge tiger prawns and topped with sunflower seeds that was like an emulsion on the verge of splitting, with the oil just beginning to seep back out again. The pink-on-black combination looked dramatic but it was oddly tasteless. We longed for something green, crunchy and simple but even the green bean salad (£7) came overly complicated with shredded green olives, radicchio and raw fennel dressed in a sweet orange zest and mustard dressing.

Of the puddings, quindim, a Brazilian speciality of coconut and lemon custard (£3), was intensely rich and sweet thanks to it being made with condensed milk and honey, its coconutty base oozing syrup, while the banana and cinnamon cake (£5) was an unexpected pleasure: layers of caramelised banana sandwiched between a sweet thick cinammon “goo” , which we were told, by one of the two friendly young waitresses serving us, was made “according to chef’s secret recipe”. A tiny glass of cinnamon-topped single cream arrived with it.

From the wine list, the most expensive single thing we tried was a glass of fruity, mineral-crisp Campolargo Cercial 2011. It was complex and unusual, but still, pretty steep at £13.20. There are plenty of cheaper wines from boutique Portuguese vineyards available by the glass, which is all the more reason to treat this as a drop-in place for a drink and a plate rather than a full-blown meal — and the deli counter still serves takeaways throughout the day.